What is Data Management? – An explanation that you can imagine

The intension of this article is to help you see, what exactly data management is?

Before delving into what is data management, let’s understand what is data? For this article we will understand Data refers to information, measurements, facts or statistics. It can take various forms, including numbers, text, images, audio, video and more. All these forms can be categorized as structured, semi-structured and unstructured. Data is the raw material from which insights and knowledge are derived through analysis and interpretation. In a digital context, data often refers to electronic information stored in databases, files or other digital formats. Before evolution of digital channels and information systems, data used to store on papers, files and these papers and files are kept secret in various ways.

Before storing data, let’s understand how data is generated. Any activity that you want to identify, memorize, measure or track…. (so on and so forth) generates data. The next question is, why all these activities are done? All these activities have certain purposes. For Examples:

1. Parents gave a name to their child. This name will be used to identify that child by the world. If someone wants to call that child, he/she will call by the name.
2. An athlete is tracking the time he/she takes to complete 1000 race meter track. Every day that athlete tracks to measure the improvement.
3. Maintaining exam results of the students and ranking them. This is done to find out academically best students.

Similarly, to operate or run an organization various activities need to be done. Such as hiring, billing, lead generation, marking and sales activities, operations and finance activities so on and so forth.

There are numerous activities happens each day, the data generated due to these activities can’t be stored in a human’s brain. Hence, there are various ways evolved periodically to collect, store and process for analysis or reference. This collection, storing and processing of data involves various amounts of risk.

In the above example, the athlete doesn’t want to share his/her progress with the competitor. However, his/her competitors are trying to find the athlete’s data so that they can set a baseline for themselves. Similarly, every data comes with certain amount of risk. To manage this risk, we as an individual or organization manage their data.

Now, let’s understand what management is. Management involves the process of planning, organizing, leading and controlling resources to achieve specific goals or objectives efficiently and effectively. It encompasses activities such as decision-making, coordination, supervision and evaluation to ensure that tasks are completed, and organizational objectives are met.

Hence, Data Management is the development and execution of plans, policies, programs to enable the practice of collecting, storing, organizing, protecting and enhancing the value of data and information assets throughout their lifecycle, so that it can be used for various purposes such as analysing for business decisions to meet organizational/regulatory objectives or obligations.

Data and information are not just assets in the sense that organizations invest in them in order to derive future value. Data and information are also vital to the day-to-day operations of most organizations. They have been called currency, the life blood, new oil of the information economy. Whether or not an organization gets value from its analytics, it cannot even transact business without data.

To read more on data management, click on the following links.

DMBoK – Data Management Body of Knowledge (dama.org)